


Star is speaking to star

by WahlBuilder



Series: The City and the beasts [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Blood, Blow Jobs, Choking, Dom/sub Undertones, Hand Jobs, High Chaos (Dishonored), M/M, Minor Character Death, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 00:58:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6634600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oleg Severov, an Overseer who has been, much to his surprise, chosen to take office of the High Overseer, executes his plans to keep the city alive despite the chaos consuming it.<br/>And he would do anything to fight the chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walk this road through the night

**Author's Note:**

> Now with a parallel work _[It's just sin, really](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6774283)_ by the owner of Monroe.  
>  Teague Martin/Daud is mentioned.

The Watch was his first concern. With their Captain disappearing—too many disappearances, and Oleg liked none of them,—with a bloodthirsty maniac out on the streets, with the plague, and the Weepers, and the hunger, they were scared and easily moved.

Oleg wouldn’t let the Lord Regent turn them against the city.

He invited the Watch to assemble at the front lobby of the Office. He ordered to not force anyone to gather.

Let them come on their own, out of fear, out of need, seeking for guidance.

He waited for them at the lobby of the Office—his Office now,—leaning on the wall, eyeing the Seven Strictures embossed on the plaques, placed under hard unyielding metal.

He had already broken several Strictures.

He would break more.

He watched from under his eyelashes men silently gathering in the lobby, most of them in their Watch uniform. A few dozens of them, and many were of the Lower City Watch. He didn’t expect the other Watch to come anyway. He stood there as they assembled, some fidgeting with their caps, others trying to look into his eyes but quickly turning their heads away.

He was dressed only in his dark shirt, rumpled, unclean, his suspenders the only thing keeping his image whole and upright, and his boots were dirty. He wore no coat and no mask, though the coat—not the crimson of the High Overseer, but the dark grey of all other Overseers,—was thrown over his elbow. His chin was dusted with stubble, his eyes were hollow with exhaustion.

He was just a man like they were, tired to the bones, not having enough time even to change his clothes.

He pushed himself away from the wall, and the Watch tensed as he walked to stand in front of them, the Strictures behind him like vigilant guards.

‘Brothers!’ he called, and his voice was husky from too little sleep, too much talking. Some of the Watchmen winced, some rolled their eyes at the term. He embossed their faces onto his memory. ‘Yes, I call you that, for we are brothers, in our faith and in our trouble. Several nights ago not only the High Overseer was brutally murdered by a madman, but many of us have fallen, too, to the bloodthirst of that murderer. I draw no lines between your fellow Watchmen and the Overseers. Our purpose is the same, to keep order, to make sure the citizens know they are safe.’

It was customary to make distinction between the Watch and the Overseers, not in favour of the former. Theirs was the dirty work, to find a thief, to catch a robber, to subdue a killer. Theirs was the dangerous work, to sort a petty purse-cutter from a potential murderer with bloodshot eyes and red mist filling their mind. The Watch would handle the dirty, the violent, but then those who were not so easily judged were brought before the Overseers who assessed the punishment and took all fame for keeping the citizens safe from the taint, both physical and spiritual.

And here he was, the High Overseer, dead on his feet, telling them that they were the same, his brothers and the Watch.

Oleg raised his hands—not very high, heavy lead they were. ‘And that is what I’m asking you to do, my brothers. You are scared, tired, you are doubting the worth, you are calculating the risks. But this is what must be done. The city needs to know that it has someone to rely on. Tonight, the Overseers would go on the streets,’ he gestured at his brothers whom he had ordered to prepare for the patrol. They were standing at the end of the staircase, eyeing the Watch gathering. They wore no masks. Good. ‘And we would patrol them, as we should at these times of chaos. We are reaching out our hands for the Watch. Are you with us?’

‘Are you asking us to trust you?’ one of the Watchmen raised his voice. His eyes had the bright shine of a man willing to fight.

Oleg threw the coat on his shoulders. His movements were stiff. He would drop dead by the morning, but that hardly mattered. He met the eyes of the Watchman at last. ‘Will you trust us if I ask you? Would you trust your brother if he asked you?’

The Watchman snorted. ‘I wouldn’t trust my brother with cracking an egg for the breakfast.’

Oleg smiled as the men—and among them, the Overseers,—laughed nervously.

‘You have your answer. And speaking of breakfast, we will be glad to share it with you after the sun is up and our shift is over.’

***

Monroe took his payment right away, reaching his hand into Oleg’s pants while Oleg leaned on him, barely able to move.

And perhaps it was telling something about him when he, drained and lifeless as he was, went hard.

He knew what it was telling.

He was sick, sick, he didn't deserve to be among his brothers. He failed to weed that sin out of himself, and it found him again. And the sin was not in that he came from another man's touch, but in the truth that he came when Monroe rasped a praise, his breath scorching on Oleg's ear.

He shuddered and arched, and he would have tumbled right over the edge of the roof were it not for the heretic's hand holding him tight. He sagged, his legs finally giving up, but Monroe wedged a knee between his thighs. Oleg was aware that they stained the inner side of Monroe's coat, but he doubted Monroe would care, with how much the coat was stained already.

Oleg couldn't keep himself from dozing off. Warm hands righted his clothes then picked him up, and it all felt like a dream.

He jerked awake some time later and panicked, not recognizing his surroundings, then remembered that the luxurious quarters, with a decent-sized bed and enough blankets to keep him warm, were now his. Someone tugged at his legs, taking off his boots. He was shirtless already, and covered with a heavy blanket.

‘What will be your first move?’

Monroe's voice was quiet. Oleg tried to move his head, though he wouldn't be able to see him in the darkness, but he felt boneless.

Finally free from his boots, he was quickly robbed of his socks, pants and underwear. He had enough energy only to tuck his feet under the blanket.

Despite his body being like watered wine, his mind was sharp, running on too much exhaustion.

‘Keep an eye on my brothers and the Watch. Report any of them who abuses his power and hurts the commonfolk in any way, taking their food or money, intimidating them into submission.’ He accumulated more energy and moved his hands to hug the softest pillow he ever laid his head on.

‘You should sleep,’ spoke the darkness.

‘Can’t. Too tired.’ And wasn’t Monroe inclined to continue?

The blanket shifted and a warm body, shirtless, but clad in pants, rolled him on the side and scooped him and pressed him, chest to back, to the same steady heartbeat that had kept him awake and grounded on the roof. ‘Sleep, little one.’

He was about to protest, but then a palm slid to the center of his chest, and he felt a surge of heavy energy that made him feel salt on his tongue, and his mind was turned off.


	2. Here is my hand; stand proud with me

He gathered his brothers, too. He spoke to them of duty, of love, he told them that they were the last line of defence against the approaching chaos, and they were to protect the city. But the city, he said, was not the walls and not the buildings, nor was it the highborn in their mansions or the Dunwall Tower. The city was the beggar on the street and the woman who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her child. The city was the boy who went to the high mansion to sell himself for the promise of elixir, the city was the man who shut the doors and closed the windows, trying to hide from death that could come in many ways.

Not everyone believed in what he said, but it didn't matter. It made them think beyond their immediate fears and hunger and pain, if only for a moment.

He wondered if brother Martin who wove and spun a silky web of words so easily, creating gossamer nets, would have said it better.

He caught brother Sturgess staring thoughtfully into empty space, mouthing Oleg's words and rubbing his neck absentmindedly. He had been choked nearly to death the night of the attack.

Oleg promised to them that the hounds would be fed, and it was enough for some of his brothers. He promised he would demand to lift the quarantine and open the Abbey. It was home while Holger Square was not, and stench of blood permeated the walls of the Office. Holger Square made them feel guilty—for being the survivors, for having, somewhere deep inside, that cowardly relief of 'it wasn't me, thank the spirits'.

He said they would open the doors of the Office on Holger Square, until the Abbey is back in their hands, and whomever comes through those doors would receive guidance and salvation and comfort and shelter. He said they would renew all services, they would come to those who couldn’t come to them.

They would protect the city.

He met the eyes of every single one of his brethren and told them that time for grief and fear was gone. Now it was time to be who they had sworn to be.

***

They discovered that he had a lover soon enough. He was not trying to hide. He needed them to know, though not the fact that he had broken the Wanton Flesh, but who he was breaking it with.

And soon, he had caught them laughing. _Our Tyvian brother has become a true Prince of Tyvia_.

And then, _our brother has caught one of the heretics_.

 _Our brother is sacrificing himself for our safety and for the city_.

Monroe was not gentle, but Oleg didn’t need him to. He wore bruises on his wrists, on his hips, around his throat, his brothers glanced at the bite marks on his shoulders when he started to go to the training grounds again, stiff as he was and wincing from the ever-present pain in his hip. But he met their stare and smiled at them and they knew he was in charge even in his nightly encounters.

Though when he was kneeling on the cold floor, thighs spasming from the effort to keep the pose, and with his throat raw and his jaws aching, he didn’t feel in charge. He felt owned and branded and used, and it was, in some twisted way, liberating. He choked on Monroe’s cock and moaned around it and revelled in the sharp pain of Monroe pulling his hair — just a little.

He was telling himself that he was doing it for the city, and it was the truth, but not the whole truth.

The whole, naked truth of it was in the way that Monroe asked every time for his permission, that he repeated time and time again that he would stop if Oleg didn’t want something.

The whole, bared truth was, Oleg liked it. And if he was breaking the Strictures, he decided to be honest with himself about it.

Oleg wasn’t close to his Overseer brethren, it was simply… not customary. Those who had been raised in the Whitecliff Abbey simply couldn’t maintain such bonds, couldn’t develop trust. Most of his brethren were like this, raised to constantly be on their tiptoes, always ready to strike and to kill. The closest bonds they usually formed were with the hounds.

Exceptions happened, of course, and not all Overseers were forged and sharpened from their childhood—the thing most of them hadn’t really had. For some time before the Empress’s murder Oleg had been helping a brother who had a lover in the Watch.

Maybe he was trying to fix a mistake of the past through helping them.

But as many of his brothers, he had found his own sanctuary. First, it was the Strictures and just about every book the Abbey hierarchs had ever written. Then, after being moved to Dunwall, he had found his sanctuary in the Archives of the Office of the High Overseer. There, he had watched lives of other people go by, documented in endless flow of papers.

But then, Monroe had come, and he had broken through Oleg’s walls the moment he took his Whaler mask off and trusted Oleg with his identity.

Oleg knew it was dangerous, to believe this man, to believe this trust, but being gifted with such a treasure had been more than he could handle.

And he fell.


	3. I shall become a hound to protect my sheep from wolves

‘Call the aristocracy to the Office.’ He entertained a thought of receiving them outside, in the front yard. That’s where most of them belonged. But that would be too grave an insult. He had to deliver his insult in other ways. ‘To the front lobby.’

Brother Michalen, who was his current secretary, snorted, and Oleg, too, allowed himself to smile. ‘I want to meet them in person, of course, and accompany them to my office.’ He exchanged a look with his brother that told him, that was unlikely to happen. They would stay in the lobby, crammed there like cattle, and they would listen to him.

The aristocracy was the main source of the Abbey’s funds, and Oleg had no doubts they would threaten to cut the funding. No matter. He had other ways to get what he wanted from them. He didn’t believe in coincidence, but the Pendleton twins being murdered in the Golden Cat was too good an opportunity to let it slip away. He had been planning to deal with the highborn anyway.

Was he turning into Campbell? The late High Overseer’s ‘black book’ had never been found after the attack, but everyone knew he had blackmail material on the brethren and the city alike.

No, Oleg thought, I won’t turn into him. I shall be better.

The aristocracy always thought that with its sponsorship it had bought the Abbey. They demanded private services and special treatment and absolution from any and every sin.  
Oleg had others who needed his brethren and him more than the fat cats did. And he was going to tip the scales.

Brother Michalen was waiting with his notebook, and Oleg, as if surfacing from the depths of his thoughts, shook his head lightly and looked up at his brother. ‘Send brother Colean to the Watch Office and deliver Watch-Sergeant Herrigan my personal condolescence about his sister. Tell him that if he needs to talk, my doors are always open, be it day or night. Ask him for patrol schedule. I’d like to plan the best possible joint patrols that would ensure performing of our duties. After that brother Colean may have an evening off.’

Alex Colean had a brother in the Low City Watch, a corporal, who would, as far as Oleg knew, be in the Watch Office.

He needed to tighten the bonds between the Watch and the Overseers. In the days to come they would hold the city together.

He met the blueblooded in full regalia, wearing a crispy dark shirt with white Overseer collar, gloves, and the crimson coat of the High Overseer. And his brethren, turned into snarling statues of unquestionable authority, flanked the lobby.

There was difference between the Overseers opening their doors to the Watch and calling them brothers, and the High Overseer making the highborn jostle each other in the lobby.

He smiled when his skin prickled and the air rushed everywhere at once, wafting a scent of salt, dark water to Oleg.

Could they feel it, too? The darkness tightening behind him? The shadows thickening? These lords and ladies in heavy silks and brocade, with jewels and pearls, their purses heavy, their stomachs full, their perfume staining the air. Oleg met the eyes of every single one and they turned away. The Strictures behind him were his pillars, the brethren at his sides were his family. The shadows behind and above him were his weapons.

‘I hear the Boyle sisters are holding party, are they not? While the city is dying of hunger.’ He didn’t let his smile waver and where he looked, murmurs died. ‘Our city is dying of hunger, beggars are stricken, mothers are beaten while the Golden Cat is full of guests.’

‘We are not—’

‘The Outsider walks among us.’ He let the pale faces murmurs their concerns this time, and said, ‘Yes, you all read what the city is screaming about. And this is no metaphor.’ _You are ruining the city. You are dragging it into the abyss_. ‘He walks and acts through the hands of men, instilling chaos and fear and pain. But I am sure,’ he raised his gloved palms, ‘that you will not let him destroy our good city and the hearts of the citizen. I am sure that you will help the Abbey to maintain order. The Abbey won’t ask the impossible of you, but it asks for anything you can do.’

And there! Finally he saw a spark of recognition in their eyes. Some of them had seen his face, hovering over their papers.

They came to the Abbey to ask for a blessing and sealing of a business deal, they came for a divination, they came to register marriage and birth.

And all of it was in his Archives.

A simple clerk, they say?

***

‘Timsh was not among them,’ he said to Monroe.

The nature of their work made them possible to meet only during the nights when Monroe didn’t have any assignemnts, or closer to sunrise when Oleg was preparing to start another day and Monroe was settling for the end of his.

‘Yes, I noticed.’

His beard scratched Oleg’s shoulder when Monroe pressed a kiss to it. Oleg reached behind and rakes his fingers through Monroe’s hair, his hair tie long gone.

Monroe had brought him a robe of white watery silk. He would take it back when he would leave.

Oleg was firm about gifts. _‘I would accept none expect those you’d give to an Overseer.’_

_‘You are an Overseer and I give you these things.’_

_He shook his head. ‘No. I wouldn’t accept any gifts an Overseer wouldn’t give.’_

He wasn’t Campbell. Monroe was free to bring him anything, but he wouldn’t accept it.

‘I’ll look into his business.’

‘Burrows has made him the City Barrister, but Timsh has never been above shadowy dealings. He would ruin a few nobles in no time. Bring me the information about them. I will make sure they are looked after by the Abbey.’

Instead of answering him Monroe lifted the watery silk and entered Oleg from behind. Oleg sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, forcing himself to relax. He was still loose from their previous coupling, and still wet. He leaned forward, supporting himself on the window while Monroe’s hands anchored him by his hip and his side. His left hand, wielding the Outsider’s mark like a sword, was sending sparks of electricity to Oleg’s hip, and that was sharper than even the sensation of Monroe moving inside him.

He sighed, hoping that the blue void wouldn’t swallow his dreams tonight.


	4. My guilt will carry me to the darkness

He would establish a routine and it would go like this:

He would wake up with the sunrise—if he had even slept at all—and go to the kitchen to help with cooking. With several brothers they would move it to the front yard, prepared to the morning visitors. The food was becoming scarce, just some porridge and bread, but always—honey-sweet Tyvian pears. Oleg would find a few sacks or barrels of them in the kitchen every morning.

He would deliver a sermon when his brethren and citizens would gather in the yard for the breakfast, and he would note that more and more people come to them with each passing day. Then he would leave his brethren to attend to those who had come to Holger Square, and he would put on the dark Overseer clothes but would leave the mask off.

People need to see that there is someone behind that mask.

He would take those medics who would be generous enough to come, and they would make their patrol through the city, tending to the sick and the poor. He would carry his sabre, though, to give final peace to those in need of it.

He would lean on the wall when nobody was watching, and he would let himself despair that they couldn’t walk through the whole city in one day, that somebody was going to die in loneliness, without peace. Somebody was going to die because they didn’t get to them in time.

He would pull himself together and walk out of the back alley and visit the Watch Office. He would talk to the Watchmen and leave some Overseers and medics with them. He would return to Holger Square with remaining Overseers, give consolation to those in need, deliver a sermon, get to his office, eat whatever his brothers would leave for him, and bury himself in papers until he would pass out on them.

He would always wake up in his bed.

He would add variables to this routine: a spar with his brethren, working in the Archives, dealing with the many gangs of Dunwall, blackmailing a highblood. He would try to read the stars, but they would laugh at him.

With Monroe, they would talk or sleep or fuck. Sometimes, drink wine in silence. Sometimes, he would ask Monroe to tie him down and use him. That would make whales stop singing songs in Oleg’s dreams.

He knew it wouldn’t last.

***

The Abbey—for now represented only by a handful of Overseers huddled together on Holger Square—was a small, tight world. In a way, it was like the city, only it didn’t scream through letters on the walls, it didn’t pour the blood and water on the streets. But there was the tension, the murmurs, the shadows in the Abbey, too.

Oleg wondered if that was how brother Martin could read the Abbey—just like Oleg himself could read the stars, the knowledge that burned in the back of his mind.

He had been thinking about brother Martin a lot these days.

He heard heavy footsteps and soft creaking of leather. He didn’t raise his head from his papers—a letter full of rage and pleas from Rothwild’s workers. He had to give them shelter and food, somehow.

‘I am going to purge the heresy from the streets.’

Oleg finally looked up at his brother. Overseer Hume was one of the eldest among the brethren, could have made it the High Overseer if he hadn’t been so zealous, so ready to charge head-first into battle.

‘I won’t be responsible for your death on the streets,’ Oleg said quietly and rubbed his face, wincing. He thought he would never, ever have enough rest.

Hume bent over his desk and grabbed him by the collar, and Oleg stiffled cold panic that tried to sieze him as Hume lifted him out of his armchair.

‘You are a disgrace!’ Hume hissed. His breath was stale and sweet like rot. ‘Being… screwed by a heretic!’

He kept control of his voice, hoping that Hume wouldn’t notice how his legs spasmed and shook. ‘Would you rather the heretics killed us all?’

‘You are not the High Overseer! You were not chosen during the Feast of Painted Kettles! You are an illegitimate whore!’

Oleg reached and squeezed Hume’s arm that began to choke him. ‘Leonard… Brother… I am trying, like all of—’

Hume dropped him into the armchair, and Oleg suppressed the urge to rub his throat. It burned, on the outside and on the inside.

‘I am attacking the Flooded District.’

The walls crashed on Oleg and buried him underneath the heavy certainty of the Office. ‘You won’t,’ he heard himself whisper. And he heard Hume’s footsteps, moving away, away, into the night.

‘Oh, I will! And after I and _my_ brothers are done with that nest of vipers, I am coming for _you_!’

Oleg took a deep breath. His eyelids were heavy, his head filled with thick smoke. He should come after them. He should stop them. They were no match for the Whalers, even if they would take the music boxes—and they would.

 _Let them go_ , he heard a dark whisper in his head—his own voice, alluring, burdening. _Let them go and die and be weeded out of your Abbey. You will be smaller in numbers, but tighter, stronger. Only the loyal will remain._

He forced himself to unclench his fists.

And let them go.

***

They were the Lower City Watch and so they let him through easily, him and a handful of his brethren, but not because he was the High Overseer— _you are not the real High Overseer_ , he reminded himself,—they nodded to him, and in the sick, too-bright light of the wall sizzling back to life behind them, he could see that they suspected the reason of his coming.

He cracked his face into one of sorrow as his insides hollowed.

He walked through the dingy alleys, and his brothers sloshed their way through the mud. The Flooded District had a shore of its own, its own tides and storms. Its own predators and secrets, too.

Oleg navigated the place, having memorized it from the few times Monroe had brought him here, although by traversing from roof to roof and not by walking on foot. One of the apartments with windows covered by heavy velvet curtains the colour of dried blood—obviously taken from somewhere else—was Monroe’s. It had only one room, a kitchen, and a bathroom with, not surprisingly, for Monroe was quite vain, a huge full-body mirror with golden vines holding it upright and a bathtub with whale tails as its feet.

The bedroom was too small for all the books that occupied it. They were scattered on the floor, under the bed, built into towers by the walls. Their covers creaked and shuffled under Oleg’s bare feet when he tried to navigate his way to the bathroom. The bed itself was, too, taken from somewhere else, for it was too grand for such a small apartment with peeling wallpapers that had been rosy sometime in their past.

By the pillow encased in white silk Oleg had found a copy of The Seven Strictures, worn, with scraps of paper stuck between the pages, with marginalia in Monroe’s round scrawl. The marginalia bore mocking tone, but they revealed deep understanding of the undertones and shades of the Strictures, too.

Oleg raised a palm just before they stepped into the dark alley that closed in on them from both sides. ‘Wait for me here, brothers. I’ll signal to you.’

He didn’t wait for them to affirm their understanding. The archway before him was lit in blinding light, though not the hollow tone on the walls of light. Oleg had to grab the wall when he slipped on the wet pavestones. He had no gloves on, and his fingers came from the wall sticky with blood.

Oleg stepped into the light, blinded by it for the moment, aware of being scrutinized, watched.

He knew the feeling, had grown accustomed to it. But now it was hostile.

As his sight returned to him, the rank hit him, too, and his palm shot to his mouth.

They were piled like slaughtered pigs, limbs lifeless, twisted at wrong angles. The dark Overseer uniform was only darker where the blood soaked the fabric through.

They must be so heavy from blood, Oleg thought.

Hume was the only one unmasked—but his face was its own mask, pale, with closed eyes, as cold as the face of a statue. He was seated leaning on the pile of his fallen comrades and only the wide gaping wound on his neck with blood spilled on the collar of the shirt and coat like a new fashionable hankerchief told Oleg that his brother Leonard was irrevocably dead.

Oleg stumbled to him. ‘I am taking the bodies,’ he choked out quietly. Leonard was holding his mask, and Oleg bent down to pick it up but almost dropped it as it slipped in his fingers.

‘Why do you think that we would let you go away?’ The voice was harsh and dry and unfamiliar.

Oleg raised his head and squinted against the light.

In the Whitecliff, during his solitary confinement, Oleg studied the few books he had persuaded his superiors to give him, and in one text, written by Oracle Veleria, the followers of the Outsider had been called ‘vultures’. Oleg hadn’t had any reference books at him, but, asking brother Galerion who had been the only person coming to him once a week and actually talking to him, he had found out that those vultures were birds that liked to feast upon carrions and that naturally, they were drawn to places where corpses usually lay—battlefields. Badlands.

Dunwall was a badland.

The Whalers crouched and stood on the lamp posts and archways and roofs, gathered like vultures.

‘I am not here to fight you,’ he said quietly and lowered his gaze to Leonard. His forehead was splattered with blood, and Oleg reached out to wipe it off, but it had crusted. He rubbed it but it wouldn’t go away.

‘You sold yourself to Monroe,’ cawed the same voice. ‘ _We_ have no dealings with you, High Overseer. But maybe if you agre—’

Oleg winced when the speaking Whaler suddenly was hurled across the small backyard and connected with the opposite wall with a heavy thud, and where he had stood, the air rushed to every direction and another figure appeared.

‘As you said, the High Overseer sold himself to _me_.’

Monroe’s voice was distorted, made etherial by the mask, like the voices Oleg heard in his blue-white dreams, but he could have fallen from relief Monroe’s voice had brought to him.

‘They attacked us,’ said Monroe. He didn’t sound harsh, only tired.

Oleg wished they were alone.

‘I am taking them home. They are my brothers,’ Oleg said and angered at himself, for his voice turned out wobbly. He was calculating the risks, the trades, the deals he could make again. Offer his body—to Monroe, to all of them—for the bodies of his brethren.

‘Take them. We won’t stop you.’

Which of them carried Daud’s will? Oleg wondered briefly. The Whaler who had spoken to him first? Monroe? Neither?

The Whalers disappeared without another word, and Oleg went to call for his living brothers but he still could feel the darkened eyes of those bearing the Outsider’s mark trained on him.

***

The way back to the Office was long and painful: they loaded bodies on the boats that the Watch offered to them, and two tallboys walked parallel to them on the streets like long-legged spiders whose bellies were glowing with devoured white-blue fireflies.

Oleg disapproved of the practice, sent a few letters to the Lord Regent, but still the tallboys shook the streets. They were heavily drugged, only half-lucid, emotions and pain dulled. Some of them stumbled onto the Holger Square when their shift was over, and shivered in Oleg’s arms, recalling what they had done under the darkness of the night, but as the days passed, they spoke less and less and stopped coming at all. Oleg instructed those of his brothers who were frequent and welcome guests among the Watch to take care of the tallboys.

Not all of the tallboys went willingly, but being raised on the stilts meant extra elixirs, and they had families.

The boats—it took three to carry the bodies of half a dozen dead Overseers—unloaded their solemn cargo at the small backyard of the Office. Oleg sent one of his living brethren with the Watchmen to the dormitory to give them tea, coffee, whiskey as thanks for their help, and with other brothers he carefully carried the bodies to smaller, simpler boats, rightened the clothes of the dead and took of their masks, embossing their faces and their names onto the plates of his memory.

Leonard was the only one who carried a personal item, a letter declaring his victory at taking a part of the Flooded District. Oleg left it on him—a token of his short-lived glory.  
They had to be burned with the boats. Nobody knew what infections the corpses might carry.

They put small whale oil jugs that shone like cold blue stars over the dark water. They pushed on the boats and the wood creaked and the water splashed. Oleg said a few words and nodded to his brothers. They took out pistols, aimed, and shot.

The oil jugs exploded, spilling fire, and Holger Square become quiter by half a dozen voices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the late update. They might get infrequent, since I am going through the painful process of graduating.


	5. Wrap me in pain; burn me on the pyre

For all that the Whaler easily and happily used violence, he pulled a face every time Oleg asked this particular thing of him. Maybe he couldn't understand the reason behind it or did understand but couldn't like it. He did it anyway, and Oleg was grateful.

He used a lash—there was no room for a whip, though sometimes, when the darkness creeper on Oleg in the office of the High Overseer—his office —Monroe used a whip instead of lash.

Oleg, as the High Overseer, had made his distate for the practice clear for his brethren. No criminal, no Overseer should be punished in such a way, and the one who raises his hand on his brother deserves to get the equal amount of lashing. ‘And by “brother”,’ he had said, ‘I mean not only those standing around me and serving with me, but any citizen, be it a servant or a lady, a smuggler or a scholar.’

Oleg struggled to keep silence, and Monroe always, always gave him one or two more hits on top of what Oleg had asked for, always a surprise and relief.

It couldn’t drive away the smell of whale oil and burning bodies that was clinging to Oleg like a wet shroud.

As he lay there, muscles locking and spasming from sharp pain, coming down from the dark spaces, Monroe wetted a clean cloth and wiped the blood and murmured soothing words Oleg couldn't understand. Then Oleg felt calloused fingers spreading something with sharp herbal smell, sage and tea tree oil, on his skin and rubbing it in the fresh wounds.

‘Sokolov has disappeared. A pity. I hoped he would draw your portrait.’ Monroe’s voice, disembodied, reminded Oleg of the low smooth voice that whispered to him in his dreams.

Oleg produced a strained smile. ‘I have none of the grandeur of Campbell and I am not blessed by pleasant looks. I look ridiculous in the High Overseer clothes.’

‘You do not.’

Oleg bit his lower lip as Monroe rubbed the oitment into one particular wound, sending sharp stinging pain through it straight into Oleg’s body. ‘It is strange,’ he said as he managed to get his breathing back under control, ‘with all the disappearances. The Watch Captain, Overseer Martin, Anton Sokolov, and, first and foremost, Lord Protector.’ Oleg knew Monroe and his brothers and sisters had some information about it, but it wasn’t included in their initial bargain, and that meant he would be forced to pay for it.

He didn’t need it, though, not now. He had enough problems even without that.

The growing population of rats.

The growing number of funeral services he and his brethren had to hold.

They all were going to die, and death wouldn’t care if they were nobles or lowblood, Whalers or Overseers.

Monroe ran his hands over Oleg’s sides, carrying the smell of herbs, and then pressed them to his wounded back, and Oleg said, ‘Burrows threatened to stop supplying us with the elixir.’

For a moment, the hands kneading his back stopped their movement but then pressed harder, going for the deepest knots in his muscles. It was bliss mixed with pain from the recent lashing, and Oleg felt on fire, hudding a pillow, burying his face in it.

‘We have some stored, enough to last us for a while.’

‘Want me to bring you more?’

Monroe was a pleasant, breath-stealing weight hovering just above his thighs.

‘It doesn’t work.’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘I stopped taking it a week ago.’

He gasped from pain when blunt nails dug into his shoulder and he was rolled on his back, but then the roaring fire in Monroe’s eyes burned him even more. ‘Are you mad?! Do you have a deathwish?’

He chuckled breathlessly as the heretic in his rage and slip of control trapped his legs beneath him. ‘I walk the streets every day. I hold hands of the dying. I end the misery of the Weepers. And I am still alive and breathing and not crying blood.’ He took one strong hand in his and tore it away from his shoulder, and nuzzled the palm covered in a thin film of herbal ointment. ‘Nobody would mourn me anyway.’

Monroe’s muscles tensed where they were connected, and his voice was cold as he spoke, ‘It would undo all your hard work.’

‘It wouldn’t. They could continue without me. They are just as capable as I am, my brethren, even more capable if I may say. I am nothing special.’ He almost asked, _Why have you even chosen me?_ But instead he asked, ‘Kiss me.’

Monroe studied his face, and Oleg tried to keep it passive, unreadable. After a moment Monroe leaned down and pressed a kiss to his lips, unusually chaste, then murmured, ‘Drink your damn elixir. I will bring it to you.’

Oleg just smiled. It didn’t matter anymore. ‘My flock and my brethren need it more than I do.’

Monroe wrapped his fingers around his neck, and Oleg let out a laugh that was quickly squeezed out of him. ‘I would force it down your throat.’

He arched into the squeezing hand, into the heavy body pinning him to the bed. ‘You… can try.’


	6. There is light behind the veil; go and have no fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of updates. It's been hard to keep up with Oleg lately.

He couldn’t save Dunwall.

Oleg realised it with a clarity of sharp shattered glass.

The reminder that he was not even the real High Overseer was stuck in him like an old bullet he couldn’t pry out. Despite his plans, his efforts, his power, he couldn’t save the City, and he couldn’t even save his brethren.

Death skittered the streets on tiny, tiny clawed legs, oozed through the grills of the sewage system, shambled unsteadily, with a groan.

No matter what he did, he couldn't wrench the City out of the hands of the Chaos.

Lord Regent had, in the end, cut their supply of the elixir, but before panic could take away his brothers, Oleg had opened the storage where he had managed to save a supply of it, cutting from his own consumption. They had watched him but turned away when he had tried to meet their eyes as he had told them to take the vials of red liquid that sloshed not unlike blood.

They had understood.

He didn't tell Monroe anything about it, even when the Whaler tried to wrench it out of his mouth with expert touches in the stiff darkness of the night.

Then his brothers had come to him, several of them, and asked to release them.

And he had said simply, _Go. But never forget that you are Overseers, and overseeing your flock is what you do._

Some had left. Others had remained. But those who had left, turned up at the yard the next morning, helping the sick, the poor, the wounded to get to their open kitchen, and had fed those who couldn't hold a spoon anymore.

They had stopped wearing their masks.

Then their food supply had dwindled to a feeble trickle.

A young gentleman had come then to the Office, and Oleg had met him in the study. The gentleman had been wearing a top hat, and a ragged, botched coat. He had taken off the hat and bowed to receive a blessing. It was not in Overseers' duties to give blessings, but Oleg didn't care about protocol and rules anymore, and had given what people wanted, what people needed.

The gentleman had made an offer, and Oleg had refused. He had nothing to pay with, he had said. The gentleman had nodded and promised to come by in a few days.

Oleg could feel the hidden stench, and had known that the young gentleman would start weeping blood in a few days, and would die.

Oleg had wondered when his brethren would be pressed to butcher their beloved companions the hounds.

Though with the abundance of rats and the surety that the plague withered in dead flesh, they had enough meat for now. Dunwall had enough meat, since there was no end to rats and corpses.

But Oleg had read a book or two and knew that they wouldn't survive on meat only.

He hated the taste of rat meat.

***

And then, there had started whispers in his dreams, dark promises of knowledge, tendrils of smoke running up and down his spine in an echo of Monroe's touch, but more insistent, more... teasing. And just as irresistible as the Whaler's caress.

He needed knowledge, wanted it with a physical ache like he wanted Monroe.

How long will the interregnum last? Where is the young Empress? Who killed Jessamine? Is the Lord Protector truly her murderer? Where is he? Where is Teague Martin?

When will the City die?

He knew they would die for sure.

He tried to ask the stars, but, still and cold, they laughed at him.

He didn't know what the whispers were; his madness, his sickness, the Dark One?..

***

He was washing himself. Even washing was a luxury. The Office had to make do with an old water pump in the backyard. Oleg had brought himself a few buckets, enough to scrub himself clean. Feeling clean was a luxury. The water was cold, rash, it smelled of dead fish, and Oleg didn't want to think what sort of diseases it carried.

He was a dead man anyway.

He scrubbed himself with a cloth, then dumped a basin of water over his head. Shuddering from cold, from exhaustion, nearly collapsing on the floor of the bathroom, he closed his eyes, trying to take his breathing under control. Then quickly, he dried himself with a small towel.

He picked up his sabre and padded, barefoot, shivering from the cold of the stone floor, to the bedroom, put on woollen pants and shirt right on his bare skin. The wool bit, but at least that would bring him uncomfortable warmth.

He had to stoke fire in the bedroom to stop himself from catching a cold because of wet hair. Why did it matter, though? He was a dead man already. But fire provided some comfort. Oleg had a few logs left, and enough paper to start the fire anew.

He put the sabre on the bed and crouched at the fireplace.

He could ask Monroe to bring him logs, bring food, bring wine, water, books... He wondered whether Monroe would bring him death, too, if he asked that of him.

At the beginning of their acquaintance, he would've said, yes, Monroe would kill him. He even had expected it as inevitable conclusion of such an affair, of long talks during insomniac nights, gazing up at the stars that eluded Oleg's calculations and perception. He couldn't find Monroe's fate in the stars.

 _They teach_ , he had said to Monroe one night when the Whaler had come to him reeking of whiskey and flame and another man, tempting Oleg again and again, asking to let him in, _they teach the High Overseer, of course, and the senior of our ranks to ask the stars. It's not the cold gazing of the Oracles—the Oracles don't like the stars, too strange, too vague. There is the poetry of math in it, and a lot of poetry proper. But I don't need math, nor do I need poetry to read the stars. They speak to me, and I listen, and I see._

 _What do you see?_ Monroe had asked him. It had been before the Empress's murder, before the plague, before the Chaos closed in on Dunwall and started swallowing him from the legs up.

 _I see dead whales_ , Oleg said quietly, _and they are angry._

He had seen a lot more than that and couldn't understand it then. It was the joke of the Dark-Eyed One; the ability to see but not comprehend the meaning; the knowledge without a key, the kiss but no familiarity in it.

And now he was blind and deaf—though not deaf to the earthly sounds, it seemed, for he heard the knock on his door. The logs in the fire crackled and whined. Oleg stood up and called, ‘Come in!’

The brethren didn’t usually go to him at such an hour, obviously mindful of his night guest—or maybe just trying to give him a few hours of rest. It must have been something dire, and so Oleg turned to the doors, schooling a mask of confidence and calm.

‘Brother…’ It had been brother Sturgess. Oleg had always admired his knowledge in the history of the Abbey, and unlike Oleg himself, brother Sturgess liked to tell it to people.

Oleg allowed himself to smile, but only a little—an invitation to speak freely.

But as his brother refused to step further into his bedroom and refused to meet his eyes, his gaze stumbling over one thing or another, Oleg felt his chest tighten. He took the few steps that separated him from his brother. ‘What is it?’

It was bad, for such silence had been too many these days, and they never meant anything good.

And as he walked closer to his brother, his kin not by blood, but by deeds and, long ago, by faith, Oleg had understood.

It didn’t struck him, but flowed, _poured_ into him, overspilling, threatening to stream out of his eyes, his mouth, his ears, crack his skin open like an old jug is opened from inside by wine.

He squeezed his brother’s shoulders, as much to hold himself upright as to reassure him. But what was there to reassure?

Sturgess was dying. Doomed.

All his knowledge, his bright, colourful retelling of the Siege of White Cliff, his witty explanations of the Seven Strictures—all of it would be gone, grained away, seep out of him in sick crimson rivulets.

No doctor would have noticed the changes yet, but Oleg knew like he knew the stars, like he could feel the pull of the whale songs in his dreams. And Sturgess knew, too.

Sturgess raised his eyes on him. Grey, they were grey, dancing flames lending them golden sparkles.

‘I’m scared.’ It felt like someone sitting inside Sturgess pushed it out of him, it spilled like blood on his lips. ‘Why didn’t the elixir work? I don’t want to bleed out. I don’t want to infect anyone else. Please…’

Oleg let the mask on his face melt away, let the pain into his eyes. He let go of one of his brother’s shoulders and reached for his sabre. The blade was suddenly too heavy in his hand, an unfamiliar weight just like the revelation of insight had suddenly become familiar again.

Flames danced on the blade.

Sturgess kneeled before him, like the young gentleman, but instead of giving the blessing he’d give to his flock, Oleg followed his brother despite the pain flaring in his right hip, and kissed him on the lips. His brother’s lips were cold like he had already been dead for a while. Oleg got up and circled his bother, keeping one hand on his shoulder. Then pressed the tip of the blade to the base of Sturgess's skull.

‘It will be quick, brother,’ he promised, and his voice was coming from the blue void of the dreams, from under the veil. ‘Go with peace.’

 

He held the body until the first rays of dawn.


	7. An enchanted voice in my ear singing, day and night

‘You should join us.’

‘You should be our leader.’

Oleg watched as brother Martin ran a hand over his face. For the seventh time that night.

A folded piece of paper had appeared on Oleg’s desk late in the afternoon. He had just returned from a sewers inspection. The sewage system must work—otherwise the City would be lost for good. How spacious the sewers of Dunwall were was almost ridiculous.

Oleg had taken a handful of his brothers, those who were still capable of performing daunting physical tasks, and set out into the tunnels. They had encountered corpses along the way, old and recent. A few Weepers that they had put down to rest. Even down there, the City was screaming its pain on its walls, but Oleg and his brothers had grown accustomed to the ominous prophecies and demands to repent.

At some point, after checking for a pulse on another body—a young man that could have been handsome had he not weeped his eyes out in trails of blood—Oleg had thought he could hear a song, a distant wailing of whales. They were not too far from the river, and the maze of the sewers could play tricks with sounds, but none of his brothers had heard that same sound.

When they had returned to Holger Square, Oleg had been reeking and tired. But not tired enough to not notice the paper.

He had opened it and read.

As an Archivist, he had encountered almost all of his brethren’s reports, notices, all the paperwork their duties demanded of them. He had a memory for handwriting, and although the note was not signed, he had recognised the hand immediately.

It had been a relief and a pain.

_I’d like to meet you. On the borders of the Flooded District, at dusk._

And now they stood in the murky, viscous shadows in the most secure place in the whole City. Everyone knew that the Whalers guarded their dominion well, but Oleg wondered whether they were protecting Overseer Teague Martin as well.

Whether brother Martin had some connection with them—like the one Oleg had himself.

The shadows couldn’t hide the sallow aspect of the face of the other Overseer, nor the slackness of that face, from fatigue or worry or possibly both.

‘We are protecting the Empress. Emily, that is,’ brother Martin said. Almost branded—not literally—a heretic by the previous High Overseer, Martin seemed to cling to the identity of an Overseer. Why else would he keep wearing an Overseer coat, and near the Flooded District—the one reigned over by the heretics most infamous for their dislike for Overseers?

But, Oleg thought drearily to himself, he was no better. At least the dark Overseer coat allowed for a grain of anonymity in the shadows. The crimson coat of the High Overseer that he was wearing didn’t allow even that.

Oleg felt they were being watched. Let them come if they want.

‘I get it the schism in the Watch is your doing?’ A small, almost illusory smirk quirked Martin’s lips, and Oleg felt an abrupt surge of pride.

‘They have always been divided, you know that. We take care of them.’

Martin’s face became stern and tired again. ‘I need you. All of you. If you support Emily—’

‘We are dying.’

A warning brayed in the distance, distorted and unintelligible. They were embossed in Oleg’s mind like the worst verses of poetry—the poetry of plague and famine and death.

‘We failed to keep the Chaos off the streets, and now I am punished for that.’

Fatigue left Martin’s face, and it twisted in fury—but Oleg was too far gone to be swayed by it. ‘What are you talking about? You know it had nothing to do with divine punishment, it’s just the plague and the assassination of the Empress and the interregnum!’

He knew that. But he hoped brother Martin of all people would understand. ‘You should take over. Take care of them. I was never meant to do that.’

Just as quickly as it was washed with fury, Martin’s face softened. The fact screamed of pain and long exhaustion, the way his expressions kept slipping out of his control. ‘And yet, you perform your duty well.’

Oleg looked around. With each passing day it was getting more and more difficult to understand the shape of things around him during twilight hours. But he managed to guess the shape of an upturned barrel. He walked to it, and something squelched under his boots. He lowered himself on the barrel. It would stain his coat, but it had been stained before by things worse than dirt.

‘I am dying, brother,’ he said at last. It was a thought—a knowledge—he didn’t allow himself to speak aloud to anyone or even to trust it to paper. In the falling darkness, Marting was a silhouette contoured in the frame of two rows of houses. Behind him rouse a barricade that marked the threshold of the Flooded District.

‘The plague?’ Martin asked quietly.

Oleg didn’t know.

‘Maybe. We have no elixir, no food, not even bandages. But I don’t think it’s the plague in my case.’ The falling darkness allowed Oleg to confess easily, but the chill wafting from Martin was almost palpable. ‘I am going insane. I am seeing things in my dreams. I feel the call.’

Martin’s eyes in the darkness were pits of black. ‘You can’t mean—’

‘I am a seer.’

Teague Martin didn’t recoil from him, didn’t make the signs to avert the Chaos like other brethren would have done. He just said, ‘Why are you not in the Oracular Order?’

Oleg smiled, for the question was funny indeed. ‘Because they don’t like seers. I don’t calculate probabilities, and nobody can prove that my insights don’t come from the one with silver tongue and black eyes. And,’ he smiled even wider, ‘nobody can prove that I’m not manipulating events myself.’

‘Are you?’ Martin cocked his head to the side.

The rising moon spilled cold silver into the alley and stood like a halo behind Martin’s head, casting his face into black shadows.

‘Who knows?’

A cloud obscured the face of the moon, and Martin was human again. ‘And yet, you are dying.’

‘I know for certain, brother.’

Martin stood a breath longer, then walked closer to Oleg and sat on the nearby barrel. Their shoulders brushed.

Oleg had always looked up to Martin. Though not an Overseer from the start, Teague Martin was an Overseer in the heart—warring, questioning, troubled by his doubts—as a true devout should be.

Far better than Campbell. Better than Oleg himself.

Oleg had no choice but to be an Overseer—a failure of one. Martin had choices—and yet, he had chosen to be an Overseer.

Even though he was guiding a conspiracy, and dealing with heretics. Oleg could smell them on him—one most potent heretic, to be exact. Oleg knew it as well as he knew the movement of the moon or could feel the flux of stars even in the brightness of daylight.

Brother Martin would be a good High Overseer. Oleg had seen it.

‘Do you have family, Helge? I’ll make sure they…’ The dark silhouette trailed off.

The man beside Oleg reeked of strong whiskey and gunpowder, and whale oil and the clogging spice of sea water.

‘All people are my family, my brothers and sisters, and children. Do not worry. It will be taken care of. I have one question, before you go.’ Oleg turned to the shadow beside him that had almost dissolved into the night. ‘Lord Protector Attano didn’t kill the Empress. I have an idea who did, having been exposed to the true scope of certain gifts. Indulge me one more time, tell me: who was it?’

The figure was silent for a moment, then turned to Oleg and answered.

Oleg nodded. ‘I see.’ Then turned back to the alley, to watch the moon falling behind the barricade. ‘He used to call me “Helge”, when we were together,’ he noted quietly.

He could feel the figure still watching him—the black wet pits of eyes, sharp gleaming teeth, long fingers with steel rings. Skin smelling of salt and kelp, and unknown depths.

‘He is waiting. You’ll meet again, in the end.’


	8. Earth sleeps in the radiant blue; I want rest and oblivion at last

The window was open, welcoming the night. It was quiet; Dunwall was too tired to scream anymore. The area around Holger Square was peaceful—as peaceful as a dead man’s face after throes of death leave the body. Five Overseers with their beloved hounds were patrolling down below, but Oleg knew nobody would come to them. Everyone in the City knew that Overseers had been starving for a while. There was nothing to take from them.

The crimson coat was thrown over Oleg’s shoulders. The heavy wool had accumulated various stenches and smells—the story of the City’s struggle. Oleg wondered whether Martin would try to wash it or decide to just burn it.

Tomorrow, provisions would be trickling here again, thanks to brother Martin and, most probably, to his dangerous lover. Oleg had no illusions, although wondered whether that gift was due to the assassin leader’s affection toward the would-be High Overseer. Certainly not due to the pity toward Overseers as a whole. Maybe due to the goodness of his heretic heart: people from all over the City had come to the Overseers’ kitchen. They would open it again tomorrow.

A candle was on Oleg’s desk—the only light in the room. Wind gushed through the high window, heavy, although not with the stench of death, but with the salt of the distant sea. It brought to Oleg the faint song of whales, too—an ancient lullaby that eased the passage of the dying.

With his mind, Oleg knew that here, he couldn’t feel the scent of the sea nor could he hear the low mourning of whales—but perhaps, it was another indulgence. Comfort for the dying, sent from the unknown depths of the blue void.

The candle was burning on the desk.

A familiar sound—the rushing of displaced air—and Oleg smiled and stepped back to make room for the dark figure that appeared on the windowsill. And, because this night was not for reservations and lies, not anymore, Oleg slotted himself into the warmth of the open coat as the Whaler lowered his legs to the floor. Monroe’s stubble scratched Oleg’s temple, and Oleg inhaled deeply his heavy scent, pierced through with the spice of the sea.

‘What is it, my Prince?’ teased Monroe’s voice, but he wrapped his arms around Oleg, and Oleg was grateful.

He wanted to say, _I love you_ , he wanted to say, _It_ _’s nothing_ , but he didn’t want to leave Monroe with the burden of confessions. So he just nestled in the circle of his arms and held onto him.

The candle was burning away on the desk.

And then he said, ‘What would you do if I asked you to kill me?’

The broad, warm, powerful body he was pressed to went rigid. ‘If you offer me money, I will punch you.’ Monroe’s voice was suddenly dull, and for a moment, Oleg worried that he had, in the end, burdened Monroe with a confession—but he’d ask no-one else. Nobody else could do that for him.

Hard hands moved to his shoulders and pushed Oleg away. Oleg looked up. Against the frame of the window and the hard light in the yard, Monroe’s face was in shadows—like brother Martin’s had been three nights ago, like the black-eyed’s face had been three nights ago. But over the jagged line of the City’s houses, laughing at the brightness of the lights in the yard, was spilled a sea of stars. They twinkled and glimmered like the magic lights on the waves in a moonless night. They were washing over the City like onto the shore. They were the eyes of the one who walked in the blue void, they were the eyes of singing whales.

In their dance, Oleg saw his own fates—all the possible outcomes of his actions—and the fates of Monroe. He searched for those that held the most truth in them, and cut others away.

‘I am dying,’ he said at last, an echo from the moment three nights ago. ‘And you and your kindred killed the Empress.’

Monroe didn’t go even more rigid, didn’t lash out—only turned his face away; the frame of the window and the backdrop of stars silhouetted his profile, his mouth, generous in kisses and sneers and jokes, his strong nose, his eyelashes, his forehead, his messy hair, tied carelessly into a bun.

‘Would it have changed anything if I had told you about it?’ Monroe asked quietly, and Oleg was mesmerised by the movement of his lips. His words were formed and pushed right into Oleg’s ears.

‘A week earlier? Maybe. But now, it matters not. I am _dying_ , Monroe.’ And before Monroe could ask, Oleg said—a mirror, again, of another discussion, ‘It’s not the plague. It just… has to be this way.’

Monroe’s hands squeezed his shoulders, a grain of strength more—and he would have crushed the bones. ‘No death _has_ to be!’

Oleg smiled. ‘No? What about the late Empress? All those deaths that have led you here? The deaths that have brought me here? We are where we are because things had to happen to lead us this way.’

‘Again with your stars?’ And this time, Monroe sounded angry and his face was set in a scowl.

The candle was dying on the desk.

Oleg reached, over Monroe’s shoulder, to the trembling, singing sea of stars, clawing at their laughing lights. ‘They are not mine. They are theirs, and theirs alone.’

Monroe grabbed his wrist, and Oleg winced from pain—and the hold relaxed immediately.

For the path Oleg had chosen, one of the many written in the sea of lights, it did not matter how he was going to die; his last orders to his brethren were by the candle on the desk, and when the morning light comes, he would be foam on the sea waves. But the way he would go mattered to Oleg himself.

‘I don’t want to die screaming,’ he burdened Monroe with a confession. Then looked at the Whaler.

Monroe was pale, his eyes roaming over Oleg’s face. A hand wound round Oleg’s waist, cold fingers slid under the coat and the shirt, and the crimson coat fell down Oleg’s back, easing the burden of the office he was leaving.

Oleg didn’t wince when those cold fingers dug into his skin.

He felt absolved of all his mistakes and transgressions and sins.

‘What do you want?’ asked Monroe, and his voice was quivering, and the top of his shirt was unbuttoned, so Oleg leaned in and kissed where the Whaler’s heart was hammering in his chest.

‘Take me to the riverbank, nearest the water, just before the dawn. Your sword suffices. Cut my life and then go away, and never look back.’

‘Is that it? Is that how it has to end?’

Oleg sighed. Monroe’s skin was warm, and adorned with scars. ‘It is how it should be. How I have chosen it to be.’ Then he remembered one important thing. ‘Tell your mentor that Teague Martin will either kill himself or Havelock will poison him. In case he might want to do something about it.’

Monroe snorted. ‘You know everything, don’t you?’

‘Not everything. Simply what’s the most important.’ Monroe was solid, his form protecting Oleg from the spears of the stars. So Oleg stood on his tiptoes and pressed a kiss to the scarred lips, tasting salt and spice on them. ‘There was a man once who called me “Helge”. Now I give this name to you.’

Monroe’s eyes were dark and his gaze heavy like a tidal wave. ‘Helge. My Prince.’

Oleg smiled. ‘We have hours before the dawn.’

***

Oleg felt no pain—just a kiss of steel—and when the sun rose in its glory over the quietened City, Oleg was signing with whales—foam in the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and sticking until the end!


End file.
